Animation Retrospective - The 1970's (Part 2)
1975: Movies, Ralph Bakshi releases Coonskin. Bakshi himself considers Cookskin his best film. It's also probably his most controversial. Certain organizations have criticized it for its racist content, when in reality, the movie was actually satirizing racist content. Like I said with Bakshi's other works, there is not really time to go into this here. Especially with something this highly controversial. The movie scene this year otherwise though is... rather quiet. There's Everybody Rides the Carousel, which sounds like a rather artsy film I could find almost nothing about. There's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which apparently is so good that it helps even the youngest of readers comprehend the original poem which it is based on. I'm probably going to have to check this out at some point. And finally, Tubby the Tuba. I haven't seen this movie either because it's very obscure, only getting a minor VHS release in America. And now the fun part, television. Goody. Tom and Jerry gets a spin-off in "The Tom and Jerry Show." Quoth wikipedia, "In a much toned down, non-violent, Yogi and Boo-Boo-esque format, the long-popular Tom and Jerry, after years of rivalry, have finally become the best of friends" Now if that doesn't sound like it completely misses the point... Return to the Planet of the Apes... that was a thing. Other than that there doesn't seem to be much that even stands out. Fraidy Cat is about a cat that's tormented by the ghosts of his past eight lives. Honestly, the little knowledge I'm able to dig up makes it sound absolutely horrible. He wants to make his last life last as long as possible, but his previous lives don't make it easy? Peter Puck was an animated hockey puck that explained ice hockey rules and ice hockey history. The Great Grape Ape Show took its main character from someone who appeared on Tom and Jerry because no one can do anything original this decade.The Oddball Couple was... well, it was pretty much CatDog thirty years before CatDog was a thing. Except this one had limited animation and was attempting to parody the Odd Couple. 1976: Uh.... this year we get Once Upon a Girl. It's... it's an animated porno. It's an x-rated film about Mother Goose being put on trial for obscenity for telling "true" versions of Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, and Little Red Riding Hood. How do you make a porno of Jack and the Beanstalk? On second thought... I don't wanna know. I imagine it has something to do with eating the magic beans. Rankin/Bass presents Rudolph's Shiny New Year, which is probably my favorite of the Rankin/Bass specials. It's the one where Rudolph has to go to the "Archipelago of Last Years" to find Happy, the baby new year. Other than that, we have... nothing. The only American animated films this year are a Rankin/Bass special and a porno. Great... As for television, let's start with Clue Club. Guess what it's about? No, it's not a Scooby Doo rip-off. Instead of one dog, this show has TWO dogs. Hanna-Barbara is really pushing the edge. Speaking of which, Scooby-Doo gets a spin-off. Here we meet Scooby's country cousin Scooby-Dum. This really happened. We also got Dynomutt, a super powered dog. I remember catching this on Boomerang a couple of times, and it definitely seems better than most of what this era was offering. You know what else existed this year? Jabberjaw. Let's take Josie and the Pussycats and give them a fucking shark. Yes, once again, this actually happened. What else is there this year? A Tarzan adaptation series, but that's about it. Honestly, this might be the worst year of the 70's so far. 1977: Strangely enough, Disney released two animated features this year: Winnie the Pooh and the Rescuers. Let's be honest here, the Rescuers has (rightfully) been overshadowed by his much-better sequel. The originall Rescuers is by and large, just okay. And Winnie the Pooh is, by and large, and endearing classic with timeless characters and a charm that hasn't been matched. Down and Dirty Duck (which may have come up in 1974, I'm getting conflicting sources) is a film that attempts to cash-in on Fritz the Cat. And animation trying to cash in on something this adult are... always a good idea /sarcasm. But seriously, originally seems to be high and dead in this decade. I mean, the best "film" to come out of this year is probably Fantastic Animation Festival, which was a package film, containing things like Superman and the Mechanical Monsters and Bambi Meets Godzilla. For the record, Bambi Meets Godzilla is one of the greatest animated short films of all time. You can watch it on YouTube and when you do, you will know why. Ralph Bakshi released Wizards, which was a departure from his previous stuff. This was his first fantasy movie. It's... a complicated one. It's an allegory about the dangers of propaganda in a fantastical world with elves and fairies after most of humanity was destroyed by a nuclear war. Once again, there's a lot to talk about and it would be easier to give Bakshi's work its own retrospective. A few of his films later on would go the fantasy route, by the way. Rankin/Bass's The Hobbit... was another delve into fantasy by people who usually didn't go that way. Let's start by saying that it did something that the Peter Jackson Hobbit films should have: it kept everything to one film, so we didn't spent like forty minutes at Bilbo's house. As far as this movie, I find the art style... kinda distracting, but the story is conveyed rather well. It's a good adaptation. Television... is weird. Muhammad Ali gets his own animated series. The Super Friends gets a spin-off, "The New Super Friends." The Skatebirds was a show "made in the same vein" as The Banana Splits. This led to the Robonic Stooges, which answered the question "what if we gave the three stooges super powers?" You... can't make this shit up. The New Adventures of Batman... is a Batman show. But other than that, there's a lot more crap that was buried in the sands of time, for good reason. 1978: The most significant film of this year was Watership Down. Like Fritz the Cat, it decided that animation didn't have to be all smiles and rainbows. This film is very famous for its... darkness and considering the crap that was coming out in this decade, it definitely seems that this was a very necessary film. Granted, since it's been 30 years since this film, we've had a lot of darker stuff so its tones may be diminished going back, but there definitely isn't another film quite like this one. Any other films this year? Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings. Rankin/Bass makes an adaptation of both Black Beauty and A Christmas Carol. Four films this year, and they are all direct adaptations. And television doesn't fare much better. What is this? Yogi's Space Race? Intergalactic racing with Yogi Bear, Jabberjaw, and Huckleberry Hound? This feels like a parody of creatively bankrupt cartoons, not something that actually happened. Jana of the Jungle, is essentially a female Tarzan. Fangface... it's Scooby Doo... with a fucking werewolf. Popeye gets a spin-off. And pretty much everything else is a super hero show, like the Fantastic Four or "Tarzan and the Super 7" 1979: Guess what? It sucks. Let's see how film fairs. Scooby Goes Hollywood. The Flintstones Meet Rockula and Frankenstone. Look, when the best thing to come out of a year is a package film "The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Movie" you've got a serious, serious problem. There doesn't seem to be one film that comes anywhere close to creative. And television doesn't help matters either. Fred and Barney Meet the Shmoo. Fred and Barney Meet the Thing. These weren't specials, they were actual fucking television series. Scooby Doo gets a cousin in Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo. We get more super hero shows and more spin-offs, and sometimes some of both. The Super Globetrotters, a spin-off of the Harlem Globetrotters. We get another Scooby-Doo rip-off. This one has a robot. So, that's my least favorite decade in animation history. What's my problem with the 1970's? Besides there being very little theatrical animation in general, cartoons are establishing the animation age ghetto and spinning themselves off into oblivion. In almost every year, there's more spin-offs than original shows. It's almost impossible to pick out something that's not an unnecessary spin-off, a rip-off of Scooby Doo or Josie and the Pussycats, or a super hero show. And keep in mind, that super hero shows of this era do not age very well (on television at least). This is years before things like Batman the Animated series or the Dark Knight. On top of that, with parents' groups complaining about violence in the medium... it doesn't work out. Most of the super hero shows were grossly simplified so it's hard for me to talk about them. I don't know if I could call one year of this decade a "good year in animation." I might be able to call 1979 the worst year in animation, but that's neither here nor there. I picked out, what? Four good classic series (Schoolhouse Rock, Fat Albert, Josie and the Pussycats, and Star Trek the Animated Series), and none of them were from the latter half of the decade. Doing a top 10 worst list of this decade is going to be damn-near impossible because all of the bad stuff is bad in EXACTLY the same way (gee, should I put Josie and the Pussy Cats in Space here... or Yogi Bear in Space here...) And yes, I know that other countries had a much better 70's decade than the United States and thank god, because this damn-near killed the medium. As for me, at least I got the two annoying decades out of the way. I don't think that any other decade of animation comes up as "bad" like I do with the 2000's and the 1970's. Some, like the 80's, are around "okay" and that's not to say that any decade is really perfect, but my god. If people were trying at all in this decade, they were trying their damnedest to put as little effort into anything as possible, with the exception of Ralph Bakshi and maybe one or two others. So, why did this happen? Well... animation moved from theaters to television where it was less profitable, and this decade was just a culmination of everything. On top of that, Walt Disney died in the previous decade, leaving theatrical animation over here in a state of limbo. In the 1970's Hanna-Barbara cancelled many of their action-oriented shows like Johnny Quest because of parents' groups complaining, and that is a trend we'll see continuing into the 80's (look up The Get-Along Gang or the Little Clowns of Happy Town and you'll know what I'm talking about). What changed to bring us out of this dark age? Well, in the 80's, Ronald Regan deregulated television. Shows could now be based entirely on a toy-line as long as they had an "educational component." We complain about toy-based and marketing moves like that today, but without them in the 80's, television animation might not have been profitable at all. But we'll get to that decade when we get to it. As for the 1970's, I say screw you and I'm glad you're dead. Go listen to your disco music. Category:Miscellaneous